Saturday, October 28, 2006

Confederate Prick

by digby

You've got to give George Allen credit for gall. He's making his pitch that Webb's a pervert by trying to tie it to Webb's 1978 (admittedly misogynistic) article about women in the military academies. Allen is using a feminist argument to accuse Webb of being a sex fiend. (His novels are “servile, subordinate, inept, incompetent, promiscuous, perverted, or some combination of these.”) It's an interesting tactic coming from a man who is well documented as having a proclivity to literally spit on women:

I stepped near the governor and smiled, told him my name and that I wrote for the local newspaper. Then I asked him a softball question, what some reporters call a "set-up."

"Does Southwest Virginia need these jobs?" I asked.

He stopped and looked straight at me. He had to look down at me, because he stood so tall in those cowboy boots. I thought I spotted a twinkle in his eye, and for a moment, I suspected he might give a humorous, light-hearted answer. Then he leaned forward and looked all the way down at the pavement. I figured he was planning a perfectly crafted answer to my question. I put pen to paper, ready to take it down. His lips puckered as if he might speak.

Then, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia gathered up a glob of tobacco-laced saliva. He used his lips to squirt it out, as if he had practiced. The spit landed just at the tip of my shoe. He grinned, but didn't say a word. Then he walked into the building.

From the sound of the other stories related at the above link, it isn't only african americans who piss Allen off, it's women too.

Allen has refused to release his divorce records and his arrest records. It's not a stretch to assume that when his best behavior as a potential candidate for president includes bullying and intimidating dark skinned folks and women, his past is filled with some really disgusting episodes.

Jennifer Allen, documents many cases of her brother's bullying in her book Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter. Read the excerpts below.

Explaining why she is scared of heights, Ms. Allen writes that "Ever since my brother George held me over the railing at Niagara Falls, I've had a fear of heights." [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter, page 43]

Referring to George's relationship with one of her boyfriends: "My brother George welcomed him by slamming a pool cue against his head." [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter, page 178]

Referring to George's early leadership skills, Jennifer wrote: "We all obeyed George. If we didn't, we knew he would kill us. Once, when Bruce refused to go to bed, George hurled him through a sliding glass door. Another time, when Gregory refused to go to bed, George tackled him and broke his collarbone. Another time, when I refused to go to bed, George dragged me up the stairs by my hair." [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter, page 22]

Referring to George's early career aspirations, Jennifer wrote "George hoped someday to become a dentist. George said he saw dentistry as a perfect profession - getting paid to make people suffer." [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter, page 22]

Referring to George's habit of terrorizing a Green Bay Packer fan in their neighborhood, Jennifer wrote that the fan's mailbox often "lay smashed in the street, a casualty of my brothers' drive-by to school in the morning. George would swerve his Mach II Mustang while Gregory held a baseball bat out the window to clear the mailbox off its post. . . . Lately, the Packers fan had resorted to stapling a Kleenex box to the mailbox post to receive his mail. George's red Mustang screeched up beside us, the Packers fan's Kleenex mailbox speared on the antenna." [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter, page 16]

Humans have a very complex, highly evolved way of interpreting a speaker's intent, which includes an instinctive understanding of paralinguistics and body language. I think that one of the things that struck most of us on a gut level about the macaca video was the expression on Allen's face and the tone in his voice. There was look in the eye that most of us can recognise right away as nasty, derisive bullying, no matter how bland his actual words. You can feel it. You know it when you see it. And the documentary evidence bears out what we saw. He's a nasty prick.